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September 2013

This is a really great report for clients for them to see how they’re doing against competitors – and a good way to start the discussion about increasing media spend. In the Campaign tab, click “Details” and then “All”.

7. Analyse Display Network websites

Google’s Display Network can often feel like The Wild West (especially to someone like me who’s very Search Network focused), however I am doing more Remarketing campaigns for clients of late (Remarketing, as you probably know, are those banner ads that pop up as you browse the web showing adverts for websites you’ve previously visited – the one’s that feel like they’re “following” you).

To analyse your Display sites, you’ll first need to get a list of site’s where your ads are appearing. In your Campaign go to the “Dimensions” Tab and select “View” and then choose “Automatic Placements”.

This report gives you the data to do two useful things:
a) Increase the bids on highly converting sites, and
b) Exclude irrelevant and poor performing sites

8. Run a Keywords Diagnosis Report

This report flags if ads are showing for each keyword and if not, why not. It only diagnoses the first 2000 keywords and takes a while with large numbers, so use filters to isolate specific keywords.

This is a good report to check if ads are appearing in different locations (and to be able to bulk check keywords rather than test them one at a time in the Ad Preview & Diagnostic Tool).

9. Run a Top vs. Other Report

This report will show you exactly where your ads are showing on the SERP. Go to the Keywords Tab, then choose “Segment”.

For each of your keywords selected, it will show how many clicks were:
1. Top (above organic results)
2. Other (on the right of organic results)

10. Check out your Search Funnels

Buried in the Conversions tab is a very interesting section called Search Funnels. There’s a whole host of conversion data including “Days to conversion” (how many days it took after the click to make the conversion) and “Assist clicks” (all the clicks leading up to a conversion – except for the last click – for each keyword).

Read Part 1 of 10 Useful Optimisation Tips I found studying for the Adwords Search Advanced Exam.

While cramming for the Adwords Search Advanced Exam, I jotted down all the optimisation ideas I thought would be useful to fold into my day to day PPC management – and so I thought I’d share them.

1. Turn on the Quality Score column in the Keywords Tab

Most of the time I check Quality Score by hovering over the keyword status or filtering results, but I’ve found it’s better to have the Quality Score show in its own separate column. To turn it on, go to the “Columns” drop down in the Keywords Tab, choose “Customise Columns”, add “Quality Score” (from the “Attributes” tab) and click save.

2. Add Invalid Clicks & Invalid Click Rates columns to Campaign Tab

This is a good way to keep an eye on invalid clicks, allowing you to take immediate action if you see a sharp rise in clicks or any other strange activity. Go to the Campaign Tab, and in the “Columns” drop down, select “Performance” and then add “Invalid Clicks” and “Invalid Click rate”.

3. Use spell check in Adwords Editor

If you build most of your draft campaigns in Excel like I do, this is a useful function to keep in mind. Right click an editable field in Adwords Editor and make sure the spell check is selected. Any errors will have a red dotted line underneath and should help you spot the misspellings you made in Excel before you upload them online or send them to a client.

4. Change or Retain Capitalisation in Adwords Editor

This is an important time saving feature, but one I’d somehow missed before. In the Keywords Tab in Adwords Editor, click “Replace text”.

You can then find and replace words, while preserving (or changing) the capitalisation. This comes in especially handy when copying and pasting ad copy (replacing a city name, for example) and is not a function in Excel (or not an easy one).

5. Assess how Destination URL’s are performing

Landing page performance sometimes gets lost in the equation, but it obviously has a dramatic effect on conversions. To run a report to identify the best converting landing pages and those which are under performing, go to the Dimensions Tab and then select “Destination URL”.

News:

February 2018:
Really delving into the nitty gritty of Local Search for one of my clients this month – fascinating stuff.

Sitting the Adwords Exams?

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